Examiner.com article character limits preclude adding more updates to the initial and subsequently-posted Journalist's Guides to Project Gunwalker. This is a continuation of updates from this column and Sipsey Street Irregulars beginning January 27, 2012. It also includes contributions from regional Gun Rights Examiners. Click here for the Part One chronology from Dec. 28, 2010 through March 8, 2011. Click here for Part Two, beginning on March 9, 2011 and ending on April 15, 2011. Click here for Part Three, beginning on April 17, 2011 and ending on June 19, 2011. Click here for Part Four, beginning on June 20,...

Federal authorities seized more than 1,200 firearms and nearly 2 million rounds of ammunition when they raided New Deal Shooting Sports, a family-run gun shop south of Deming, last month as part of a multi-agency investigation into illegal gun sales and smuggling. The tally of weapons seized was laid out in search warrant documents filed this week in federal court after the warrants were executed on the gun shop owner’s home and shop between Aug. 30 and Sept. 2. The accounting of weapons and ammunition filled nearly 100 pages. Affidavits for the warrants also describe conversations in which confidential informants...

WASHINGTON – A botched Justice Department plot to send guns into Mexico and trace them to drug cartels has some members of Congress, including Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, suggesting Attorney General Eric Holder should resign. “For our government to allow all these weapons to cross the border – to encourage it or maybe even set it up – that, to me, goes beyond a harebrained scheme,” Pearce told the Journal. “It’s dangerous.” The controversial gun operation – dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious” and carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives starting in 2009 –...

I know I’ve been doing a lot of posting on the Fast and Furious scandal and some of you might not be as enthralled as I am with it but I think this is heading downhill quickly for the DOJ (and thus Eric Holder) and I can’t wait to see where this will all end up. It’s like a great mystery movie where you watch and watch and wait to see “who done it”. We all know “who done it” here but will they get away with it and will it eventually end up in Obama’s lap? Breaking news out...

The communists never had a problem with killing people when it came to pushing their political ideology. Apparently the same can be said of their ideological little brothers in the Obama administration. Using the “you can’t make an omelet without a little mass murder” rational, high level officials throughout the US government including the Justice Department, ATF, Border Patrol, DEA, and ICE encouraged the sale of over 1,700 weapons to Mexican cartel agents in the US for transportation across the border with the expressed hope that they would be used to commit violent crimes in Mexico. The rational behind Operation...

One of the whistleblowers who brought the massive “Gun Walker” scandal to light, ATF Special Agent Vince Cefalu, was terminated after a thirty-year career last week… the day after House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a warning letter to the Bureau, demanding a promise that there would be no retaliatory firings of whistleblowers. Ironically, one of the reasons given for Cefalu’s termination was “a lack of candor.” He was previously turned into a desk ornament for daring to become a “vocal critic” of an illegal wiretap. Since he spoke up about Gun Walker, he spent most of his time...

Despicable: The report doesn't mention the estimated 150 dead in Mexico, plus two U.S. agents. Just gun control. And long-debunked statistics. “Outgunned: Law Enforcement Agents Warn Congress They Lack Adequate Tools to Counter Illegal Firearms Trafficking” relies upon a carefully balanced blend of newly minted buzzwords, long-debunked statistics, and purposeful disinformation.The 26-page report appears to exist for a political purpose: to gloss over the felonious actions of a multi-agency task force drawn from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security, and the Internal...

Can demagoguery stymie the growing Republican investigation? The Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform will be having a forum today on the Â“GunwalkerÂ” scandal almost guaranteed to fill any observer with disgust. It will be a markedly different than the previous hearings on the scandal chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa.The hearings two weeks ago saw Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents testify about their role in Operation Fast and Furious, the multi-agency scheme that allowed gun smugglers to arm Mexican drug cartels with 2,000 or more weapons as federal law enforcement officers watched. IssaÂ’s hearings included...

The ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on the flow of illegal guns between the U.S. and Mexico on Thursday in response to recent controversy over a botched gun-trafficking program. ... Speakers at the minority hearing will include Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a former ATF agent and several gun control advocates.

One Of The Weapons The ATF Allowed To Be Purchased By Mexican Drug Cartels Republican Darrell Issa of CA, wrote a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Deputy Director William J. Hoover, demanding that there be no reprisals against the ATF agents testifying in the illegal Operation Fast and Furious; the operation termed "Felony Stupid" by Issa. Twenty four hours later, Agent Vince Cefalu received notice that the agency wants to terminate him, after thirty years, for an apparent "lack of candor". Agent Cefalu problems with the ATF go back four years, when he caused ill...

Kenneth Melson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms faces controversy over the agency's surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns into Mexico. He is said to be eager to testify to Congress. The acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is strongly resisting pressure to step down because of growing controversy over the agency's surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns to flow unchecked into Mexico, according to several federal sources in Washington.

"ATF served Special Agent Vince Cefalu with termination paperwork today." That's the word from Jay Dobyns, himself a subject of Bureau retaliation, in a post on CleanUpATF. Gun Rights Examiner reported on Cefalu in May of last year--He was the agent assigned to do nothing because he came forward to complain about ATF mismanagement.From Dobyns post:

The Post prints an attack on Issa that no other paper saw fit to run: an anonymous hit job concocted by the Obama administration. And The Times finally talks Gunwalker ... by attacking the GOP. With a debunked lie. To date, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley have led the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious: a multi-agency scheme that allowed known straw purchasers to buy an estimated 2,000 firearms and to smuggle them into Mexico, into the hands of the narco-terrorists of Mexican cartels. An estimated 150 Mexican police officers and soldiers have been killed by the weapons.Issa...

With the exceptions of CBS's Sharyl Attkission and Fox's William LaJeunesse, the mainstream media - especially television news - have done their best to ignore Project Gunwalker or Operation Fast and Furious or whatever you want to call it. So imagine my delight at seeing CNN's Jeanne Meserve looking properly dour calling the hearings last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee "fiery". She also said that Operation Fast and Furious "has become quite explosive here in Washington." It is about time that the major news organizations recognize Project Gunwalker and the damage it has done in an...

Texas Rep. Ron Paul slammed President Obama Monday, questioning why the Justice Department was allowed to go forward with a program providing Mexican drug cartel members access to weapons, one of which eventually killed a border patrol guard. “The ATF has a long history of abusing our Second Amendment rights, so I was glad to see Congressman Issa demanding answers on the Project ‘Gunwalker’ scandal,” Mr. Paul said. “My hope is that the recent hearing will further expose the ATF’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s assaults on law-abiding gun owners, and more people will start questioning the need for unconstitutional...

Do you like this article? On Fox and Friends this morning, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) discussed his expectation that Kenneth Melson will resign his position as Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) today, as part of the fallout from the "Project Gunwalker" scandal. Last Thursday, we looked at what is emerging as apparently the "best" excuse the "gun control" lobby can conjure up in order to absolve the BATFE of guilt for this murderous monstrosity: that because the Senate has refused to confirm a permanent BATFE director, the agency is "leaderless," and thus cannot...

While the percentage of Mexican criminal firepower supposedly attributable to the U.S. civilian gun market continues to fall, U.S. gun shops (and gun shows) are still supposedly on the hook for 70% of recovered Mexican "crime guns" (at one time, the figure being tossed around was "95-100%"--a figure that steadily dropped as it became indefensible). That the "70%" figure refers not to the total number of seized guns, but to the percentage of those submitted to, and successfully traced by, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), is generally ignored. The fact that according to the Mexican newspaper...

First, from FOX: "ATF Director Getting the Boot?" Meanwhile, Pravda reporters Jerry Markon and Sari Horwitz, assisted by Anne E. Kornblut and Darth Breuer's favorite lap-dog journalist James V. Grimaldi write this evening: "Obama’s nominee for ATF chief to meet with Justice Department officials." President Obama’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is scheduled to meet with senior Justice Department officials Tuesday amid growing pressure on the agency’s leadership over a controversial gun-trafficking operation. Andrew Traver, who runs the ATF’s Chicago office, is arriving in Washington as political fallout is continuing from the agency’s “Fast...

A spokesman for House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told The Daily Caller the congressman expects his investigations into the Justice Department’s gun walking programs to point to a much higher political appointee than acting ATF director Kenneth Melson. Melson is widely expected to resign some time in the next couple of days in the face of political pressure from Issa’s investigations into Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast Furious. Even if Melson resigns, Issa spokesman Frederick Hill said the Committee expects to find much more and continue with investigations. “The investigations are far from over,” Hill told TheDC. “It’s quite...

I remember reading recently that Obama met with a gun-grabber group or member, and assured them that things were being done "under the radar" to advance the cause of gun control. With the "gunwalker" stuff hitting the fan, I wonder if the parties to that conversation deserve a subpoena?

. . .With the murder rate in Chihuahua State (which includes Ciudad Juarez) going from 600 in 2007 to more than 2,700 in 2008, ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Field Division, Michael Golson, puts the blame squarely on "firearms trafficking." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a visit to Mexico, said Wednesday that America's inability to prevent weapons being smuggled across the border is causing the deaths of Mexican police officers, soldiers and civilians Now, the ATF is about to get some reinforcements under an initiative announced this week by the Obama administration. The money will...

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives acting Director Kenneth Melson is facing pressure to resign over a poorly run gun-trafficking operation blamed for putting weapons in the hands of a border agent's killers. One of the three ATF agents who blew the whistle on the program, dubbed "Fast and Furious," told a Congressional committee hearing last week that rather than shutting down the illegal gun trade to drug cartels, the operation helped arm them. "ATF is supposed to be the sheepdog that protects against the wolves that prey upon our southern border," ATF Agent John Dodson said. "Rather than...

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) told CNSNews.com in an interview that he believes the Justice Department is covering up information relevant to a congressional investigation of an operation in which the department knowingly allowed intermediaries of Mexican drug cartels to purchase guns at licensed firearms dealers in the United States and then get away without being arrested or the guns being retrieved. Last December, two of those guns ended up at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was killed by alleged agents of the Mexican drug cartels. Issa pointed to...

NBC News Panel Left Stunned...House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) appeared on MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe' this morning to discuss the administration's so-called anti-gun trafficking program known as ‘Fast and Furious.' Issa said the program "looks like Iran Contra," and began almost immediately after Pres. Obama's inauguration. Issa says the plan was intentional: to let illegal guns walk across the border ‘to see where the weapons would end up....it was like letting go of the steering wheel and seeing where the car would end up, but not grabbing it before it leaves the road.'

Kenneth Melson is expected to resign from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: The Chicago ATF field office head is to meet with Holder, sources say The sources say the resignation could occur in the coming days The operation allowed illegal gun purchases Some weapons ended up in the hands of Mexican cartels Washington (CNN) -- Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is expected to resign under pressure, perhaps in the next day or two, in the wake of the ongoing controversy over Operation Fast and Furious, two...

There's a war along the Mexican border all right, but it's not necessarily the one you're thinking of. In fact, this one has spread all the way to the halls of Congress. This week, the Obama administration is expected to fire Kenneth Melson, the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- tossing him under the bus as a symbolic gesture to a congressional committee headed by Rep. Daryl Issa (R-Calif.). Issa's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating an insane ATF operation -- a supposed sting that involved the deliberate funneling of thousands of...

Barack Obama's involvement in up to three crimes is cause for removal from officeExecutive Summary for Members of Congress:(1) There is hard evidence that Barack Obama participated personally in a Federal crime, specifically operation of an illegal gambling operation across state lines, to raise the campaign funds that put him into office. (2) The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE), which reports to Eric Holder who reports to Barack Obama, may have committed multiple firearm felonies by orchestrating the transfer of more than two thousand firearms to suspected or known criminals (Mexican drug gangs). These firearms were used...

On December 14, 2010, a special unit of the U.S. Border Patrol came across a group of heavily armed suspects near Rio Rico, Arizona. The Border Patrol team identified themselves as law enforcement officers, at which point the armed men open fire. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was hit in the pelvis by a single bullet and died the next morning. One of the suspects was captured, and two AK-pattern semiautomatic rifles recovered at the scene were identified by serial number as weapons that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) — acting in concert with and with...

Watergate cliches though they are, two questions beg to be asked about the exploding Fast and Furious scandal at the U.S. Department of Justice: What did Attorney General Eric Holder know and when did he know it concerning the underlying concept, operational protocols and legal status of the Operation Fast and Furious program in the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau? Those questions gained special relevance Wednesday when four ATF agents testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and squarely contradicted a Feb. 4, 2011, claim by a department spokesman that DOJ did not approve of the program that...

Pay attention to this era-defining event: The 2,000+ weapons are implicated in an estimated 150 shootings of Mexican officers and soldiers, two American officers, and an unknown number of civilians. On October 5, 1986, a former U.S. Air Force C-123 transport plane was shot down in Nicaragua. The pilots and radio operator perished when the plane crashed, but a former U.S. Marine who was a cargo handler on the aircraft was able to parachute to safety. He was captured by the Nicaraguan government.The former Marine, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed to be a cargo handler for the CIA. His capture and trial...

Phoenix radio station KFYI, Mike Broomhead show, June 15, 2011, 4 p.m. segment At about 8:10 in the poddcast, Mike interviews Joe Gordon, former ATF supervisor in Phoenix. He was the Assistant Special Agent in charge for law enforcement operations in Phoenix from 1999-2007. Joe said the operation started out doing very well, tracing guns used in Mexican crimes back to where they were purchased. They were researching gun stores in Phoenix and Tuscon, identifying the people buying the guns, and assembling a package of information about who was making money by selling guns to the cartels. Originally they stopped...

The one thing I couldn't get my head around on 'gunwalker' was why would drug lords by semi-auto AK-47's for $500+ apiece when they could get the real deal for much less through the southern border of Mexico. Then it dawned on me that the only thing that makes sense is if the BATF funded the purchases. We all should ask Issa and Grassley to follow the money.

Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C. The operation was supposed to stem the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico by allowing so-called straw buyers to purchase guns legally in the U.S. and later sell them in Mexico, usually to drug cartels. Instead, ATF documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms knowingly and...

California Republican Darrell Issa has called a hearing to look at the possibility that the Department of Justice (DOJ) may be committing obstruction of justice by ignoring a subpoena. On April 1, Issa, House Oversight Committee chairman, subpoenaed all documents pertaining to two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) programs, Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious. Specifically, Issa was looking for documents and communications “relating to the genesis” of the programs and any information related to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Two AK-47s ATF was tracking through Operation Fast and Furious were found at...

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee will use the power of the subpoena to learn if a federal gun-tracking program contributed to the killing of a Border Patrol agent. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is planning to issue a number of subpoenas to federal officials with ties to the controversial program, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The move by Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, comes on the tail end of a series of interviews with government officials and witnesses that the panel’s investigators conducted last month. Sources...

Rep. Darrell Issa says he’s had to go directly to the field to get information about Project Gunrunner because the Obama administration has stonewalled on all of the information subpoenas they’ve been sent. But now it’s their turn. Issa says that he’s ready to subpoena people in the Obama administration for hearings this summer. He points out that this isn’t the discovery phase of the process because they know exactly what happened. They now want to know what the administration was thinking by approving a process that sent high-powered weapons to the ‘worst of the worst’ on both sides of...

I was aghast and infuriated when I read the May 29 story from the Times Union Washington bureau, "Bushmaster linked to drug trade." It was so full of anti-gun disinformation that has been proven to either be untrue or half-truths that I had to make sure that I had not inadvertently picked up some far-left publication. The story refers to a federal report that traced 2,921 guns back to the United States between 2006 and 2010. It does not mention that most guns in Mexico come from Central American weapon stashes that were accumulated during the many years of wars...

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives sting operation named Project Gunrunner passed so many guns to border-crossing smugglers as bait to snag high-level Mexican drug cartel leaders — instead of intercepting them as intended — that one was used to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December. Project Gunrunner had been whitewashed by a 152-page Justice Department Inspector General Review in November, before the Terry murder. But when bloggers including National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea publicly exposed Project Gunrunner and its successor, Operation Fast and Furious, it delivered swift results. Immediately, half a dozen...

Back on February 11th, TTAG pointed out the insanity that was the ATFâ€™s decision to allow 50 caliber rifles walk across the border as part of Operation Fast and Furious. â€śSenator Grassley recently released documents showing that one of the ATF's stooges, the man who bought the weapons used to kill Agent Terry, purchased two .50 caliber rifles. The main, perhaps only reason Mexican drug gangs would want a .50 caliber rifle: to take out a truck. Or a helicopter. Now you could say .50 caliber rifles don't take out armored personnel carriers or choppers, drug smugglers do. And you'd...

Convicted gun smuggler John Phillip Hernandez of Houston was likely not the kind of customer that Bushmaster Firearms International had in mind when he purchased 14 of their .223-caliber AR-15s at Houston area gun shops in 2006 and 2007. Bushmaster describes the AR-15 rifles, a civilian version of the U.S. military's standard-issue M-16, as intended "for law enforcement, security and private consumer use.“ But the weapons Hernandez and his associates purchased ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartel pistoleros, including a Bushmaster .223 that was used to kill four police officers and three secretaries in Acapulco. A Hearst...

Mid-June could potentially bring the first of what may be several hearings on Capitol Hill over Project Gunrunner, but that is not confirmed nor is it presently on the Congressional calendar, a House source said today. "It might not happen," the source said via e-mail. Mike Vanderboegh, the Sipsey Street Irregulars blogger who broke the initial Gunrunner stories with National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea almost six months ago, first reported the possibility of a hearing earlier today. That hearing would be before Congressman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa did recently indicate that hearings into the...

Congressman Darrell Issa (R. CA) threatened Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives has threatened acting head Kenneth E. Melson with a contempt citation for his failure to comply with a Congressional subpoena. "Let me be clear ... we are not conducting a concurrent investigation with the Department of Justice, but rather an independent investigation of the Department of Justice – specifically, of allegations that the reckless and inappropriate decisions of Department officials have created a serious public safety hazard." Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a letter yesterday to...

Imagine a scenario in which the media outlet most afflicted with Barack Obama Sycophancy Syndrome (BOSS) – the place Chris ‘thrill up my leg’ Matthews calls home – presented a ’smoking gun’ that could implicate the Obama White House in a cover-up akin to that of Watergate but with the added scarlet letter of murder. The notion of such a thing would be like Woodward and Bernstein ignoring Deep Throat. Impossible, right? Yes, unless it did so unintentionally. It looks like that honor may just go to none other than Michael Isikoff who, in September of 2010, wrote about an...

Newly released research indicates that the more pro-gun control the administration, the less likely they are to prosecute the real criminals. A new report from Syracuse University researchers notes that the Obama administration fails to prosecute violent criminals who most likely contribute to gun-related violence. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is supposed to investigate and arrest those who violate federal gun laws (e.g., felons in possession, straw purchasers).Syracuse UniversityÂ’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reports that January 2011 was Â“the lowest level to which federal weapons prosecutions have fallen since January 2001, when they were 445...